The Impact of Japanese Occupation on the Peking Union Medical College

Abstract

Established by the China Medical Board in 1921, the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) was the most prominent institution of Western medicine in Republican China. It had state-of-the-art buildings, equipment, and other infrastructural set-up, and it hosted leading medical experts of their field in the city of Beijing. However, most historical accounts of the PUMC remain silent on the years of its Japanese occupation. In 1942, the Japanese suspended the campus of PUMC and utilized it for their own purposes. This report draws on the records of the China Medical Board to reconstruct a picture of what happened to the PUMC during the era of Japanese occupation